The film has currently grossed over $1 billion worldwide, making it the second top-grossing film of 2012 behind The Avengers, the second top-grossing film of The Dark Knight Trilogy as well as the 9th highest-grossing film worldwide of all time.

2012 Aurora shooting

In the early morning on July 20, 2012, 15 minutes into a sold-out midnight showing of the film at the Century 16 theater in Aurora, Colorado, suspect James Holmes entered the theater and threw a gas bomb canister into the auditorium before opening fire on the crowd, killing 12 and injuring 58 others. Holmes was arrested by authorities in the theater parking lot shortly after the shooting, identifying himself to them as "The Joker" (a villain from the previous Batman film, The Dark Knight).

As a result of the shooting, film distributor Warner Bros. issued a statement stating it was "deeply saddened" by the massacre and canceled the premiere of the film in Paris, Mexico and Japan,[3] in addition to removing the trailer for the film Gangster Squad from screenings of The Dark Knight Rises and pushing the release of it back to early 2013. Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight Trilogy, commented on the shooting as "savage".[4]Batman actor Christian Bale privately visited victims of the massacre in the week following the opening of the film on July 24, 2012.

Security was stepped up in movie theaters nationwide over the opening weekend of The Dark Knight Rises in response to the shooting.

Political messages

Spoiler warningThis article contains important plot information

The Dark Knight Rises is considered to be one of the best conservative films ever due to its depiction of Occupy Wall Street-esque protesters as the villains[5] who, under the lead of terrorists Talia al Ghul and Bane, orchestrate a takeover of Gotham City and force capitalists from their homes before sentencing them to a grisly "exile" from the city. In addition, Batman's alter ego Bruce Wayne's company, Wayne Enterprises, is shown in the film to have a significant drop in stock after investing in an environmentalist, progressive business endeavor to install a clean energy source reactor to power Gotham City, which is revealed to hold a nuclear bomb in its core deliberately created by the villain Talia al Ghul to destroy the city. Finally, Batman is shown in the finale as willing to sacrifice himself to save the people of Gotham from destruction by nuclear annihilation, despite the city having branded him as a villain for the murders caused by Two-Face in the previous film, The Dark Knight. This is not unlike Jesus enduring death on the Cross to save us from our sins.

However, renowned conservative commentator and RINO BackerRush Limbaugh aptly pointed out that the movie, released just a few months before the 2012 presidential election featured the villain Bane, a character who first appeared in Batman comics in the early 1990s, and whose name resembles Bain Capital, the former company of Republican candidate Mitt Romney. If this was intended as a not-so-subtle attack on the Republican party, it is consistent with Christopher Nolan's financial and verbal support for leftist politicians in both the United Kingdom and America.